PCem

Download: Windows/Linux

Latest version: v17 Changelog

PCem is licensed under GPL v2.0, see COPYING for more details.

You can submit patches on our forum. Before you do, please note the guidelines for submitting patches.

❗ Note: NO COPYRIGHTED ROM FILES ARE INCLUDED NOR WILL THEY BE. PLEASE DO NOT ASK FOR THEM.

BSD and Linux supplement (v17)

You will need the following libraries (and their dependencies):

• SDL2
• wxWidgets 3.x
• OpenAL

Open a terminal window, navigate to the PCem directory then enter:

Linux

./configure --enable-release
make

BSD

./configure --enable-release-build
gmake

then ./pcem to run.

The Linux/BSD versions store BIOS ROM images, configuration files, and other data in ~/.pcem

configure options are :

  --enable-release-build : Generate release build. Recommended for regular use.
  --enable-debug         : Compile with debugging enabled.
  --enable-networking    : Build with networking support.
  --enable-alsa          : Build with support for MIDI output through ALSA. Requires libasound.

The menu is a pop-up menu in the Linux/BSD port. Right-click on the main window when mouse is not captured.

CD-ROM support currently only accesses /dev/cdrom. It has not been heavily tested.

Links

PCem emulates the following hardware (as of v17):

Software Tested (list)

• DOS
  
• Windows
  
• Windows NT
  
• OS/2
  
• Linux
  
• Applications
  
• Games
  
• Demos
  
• Emulators
  

Systems

8088 based

8086 based

286 based

386 based

486 based

Pentium based

Super Socket 7 based

Socket 8 based

Slot 1 based

Additional Notes

[1] Toshiba Button Mapping: PCem maps [Fn] to right-Ctrl and right-Alt. The following functions are supported: Key Combo | Function ---|--- Fn + Num Lock | toggle numpad Fn + Home | Internal LCD display Fn + Page Down | Turbo on Fn + Right | Toggle LCD font Fn + End | External CRT display Fn + SysRQ | Toggle window

[2] Amstrad MegaPC (386SX): The original machine had a built-in Sega MegaDrive. This is not emulated in PCem.

[3] IBM PS/2 Model 70 (type 4) (486DX): PCem's FPU emulation is not bit accurate and can not pass IBM's floating point tests. As a result, this machine will always print 12903 and 162 errors on bootup. These can be ignored - F1 will boot the machine.

[4] Intel Advanced/EV (Endeavor) (Pentium): The real board has a Sound Blaster 16 onboard and optionally an S3 Trio64V+. Neither are emulated as onboard devices.

[5] Some systems have fixed graphics adapters:
** = Can use external video card.

[6] Olivetti M24 (display): I haven't seen a dump of the font ROM for this yet, so if one is not provided the MDA font will be used - which looks slightly odd as it is 14-line instead of 16-line.

Graphics Cards

Basic cards

Unaccelerated (S)VGA cards

2D Accelerated SVGA cards

3D Accelerated SVGA cards

3D only cards

Additional Notes

[1] Cirrus Logic GD-5434: Real chip also supports 1MB configurations, however this is not currently supported in PCem.

[2] Diamond Stealth 3D 2000: PCem emulates the ViRGE S3D engine in software. This works with most games I tried, but there may be some issues. The Direct3D drivers for the /325 are fairly poor (often showing as missing triangles), so use of the /DX instead is recommended.

[3] S3 ViRGE/DX: The drivers that come with Windows are similar to those for the /325, however better ones do exist (try the 8-21-1997 version). With the correct drivers, many early Direct3D games work okay (if slowly).

[4] 3DFX Voodoo Graphics: PCem emulates this in software. The emulation is a lot faster than in v10 (thanks to a new dynamic recompiler) and should be capable of hitting Voodoo 1 performance on most machines when two render threads are used. As before, the emulated CPU is the bottleneck for most games.

PCem can emulate 6 and 8 MB configurations, but defaults to 4 MB for compatibility. It can also emulate the screen filter present on the original card, though this does at present have a noticeable performance hit.

Almost everything I've tried works okay, with a very few exceptions - Screamer 2 and Rally have serious issues.

[5] Obsidian SB50: Drivers for this are a bit limited - the official drivers don't support 2 TMUs in Direct3D.

[6] 3DFX Voodoo 2: PCem can emulate both 8 and 12 MB configurations. It can also emulate 6 and 10 MB configurations (with 2MB framebuffer memory), which were never sold into the PC market but do exist for arcade systems.

Sound Cards

Additional Notes

[1] Sound Blaster: Several Sound Blasters are emulated.

• SB v1.0 - The original. Limited to 22khz, and no auto-init DMA (can cause crackles sometimes).
• SB v1.5 - Adds auto-init DMA
• SB v2.0 - Upped to 41khz
• SB Pro v1.0 - Stereo with twin OPL2 chips.
• SB Pro v2.0 - Stereo with OPL 3 chip
• SB 16 - 16 bit stereo
• SB AWE32 - SB 16 + wavetable MIDI. This requires a ROM dump from a real AWE32.

All cards are set to Address 220, IRQ 7 and DMA 1 (and High DMA 5). IRQ and DMA can be changed for the SB16 & AWE32 in the drivers. The relevant SET line for autoexec.bat is SET BLASTER = A220 I7 D1 Tx - where Tx is T1 for SB v1.0, T3 for SB v2.0, T4 for SB Pro, and T6 for SB16.

AWE32 requires a ROM dump called awe32.raw. AWE-DUMP is a utility which can get a dump from a real card. Most EMU8000 functionality should work, however filters are not correct and reverb/chorus effects are not currently emulated.

HDD Controller Cards

Misc Cards